The criticism of religion as mere ideology is justified if it reveals that
what were previously impulses in religious disguise, such as dissatisfaction
with the order on earth, may become effective today in a different form. The
life of the revolutionary is such a revelation. But criticism of religion by
a bourgeois usually contains none. Instead, it is disquietingly and intimately
connected with the blindness to any value except his profit. Bourgeois materialism
and positivism were no less the servants of profit interests than conservative
idealism which followed in their wake. To the extent that the materialist bourgeois
endeavored to talk the masses out of their belief in a Beyond, his age unleashed
the economic motive in its place. It could find gratification in this world
and he, and sometimes even the masses, benefited from this. That kind of atheism
was the world view of a relative prosperity. Now, conservative idealism is inculcating
the masses with a belief in the Beyond once again because the economic drive
can no longer be satisfied in this world. This is no simple regression to pre-bourgeois
religiosity, however, for the Beyond is only one among many, frequently contradictory
ideologies within conservative idealism. These days, Christianity is not primarily
used as a religion but as a crude transfiguration of existing conditions. The
genius of political, military and industry leaders, and especially the nation,
compete with God for first place.